The present invention relates to improvements in surgical instruments. The invention has particular utility in connection with surgical instruments for use in cutting, clipping and/or coagulating and will be described in connection with such utility, although other utility is contemplated.
In the course of a surgical operation, a surgeon often must sever one or more blood vessels. It is desirable to provide means for closing the ends of severed vessels before the vessel is severed in order to stop bleeding which may interfere with the performance of the operation as well as present unnecessary risks of blood loss to the patient. As a result various surgical instruments have been developed and are available commercially for closing the ends of severed vessels to prevent bleeding by ligating or clamping off major blood vessels and cauterizing smaller blood vessels. For severing larger blood vessels, one preferred technique is the application of a pair of spaced hemostatic or ligating clips to the blood vessel and then severing the blood vessel between the spaced ligating clips. An example of an instrument used for such ligating clip application is described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,439,523 issued Apr. 22, 1969 to Ernest C. Wood. As taught by Wood, a magazine may be provided for mounting a plurality of ligating clips in position to be loaded between the jaws of the instrument whereby to permit application of a large number of ligating clips to various blood vessels to be clamped off. Actual cutting of the tissue and severing of the blood vessels may be accomplished using a conventional scalpel or a laser scalpel such as shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,266,547 to Komiya. Alternatively, surgical scissors may be employed to cut the tissue and to sever the blood vessels. Using a laser scalpel has an advantage in that small blood vessels may be severed and cauterized in a single step.